PUNE: President of National Co-operative Union of India (NCUI), G H Amin on Monday said that the co-operative movement in India has not been affected due to global slowdown of economy owing to its characteristic philosophy.
“The major strength of co-operative movement is that it originates from the convergence of economy, social and cultural needs of members and not the convergence of capital to serve the profit motives of the investors like corporate or other commercial organisations,” he said.
Amin, who is also a chairman of National Council for Co-operative Training (NCCT), was speaking at the national symposium on ‘Global crisis-an opportunity for co-operatives,’ jointly organised by Vaikunth Mehta National Institute of Co-operative Management (VAMNICOM) and NCCT.
Amin said that the co-operative movement in the country has almost covered all important economic sectors providing necessary goods and services to improve the quality of life of people.
“There are more than 5.8 lakh co-operative organisations in India with over 24 crore membership and working capital of nearly 4.89 lakh crore,” Amin said.
He further said that the co-operative credit institutions are disbursing about 45 per cent of agricultural credit in the country and the share of co-operative organisations in the sugar production is about 46.2 per cent.
He appealed to the co-operative players to prepare themselves with all desired professionalism for sustainability and growth in the scenario of global recession.
Amin also said that the National Co-operative Union of India through NCCT with a network of 20 training units spread all over India has been making all possible efforts to support and promote the co-operative movement by designing innovative polices and programmes.
National level inter-university debate competition themed on ‘Co-operatives-a tool for socio-economic development of rural India’ also kicked off on the occasion.
Over 125 students from 40 universities from all over the county are participating in the three-day competition.
Director of VAMNICOM Nitin Gadre, director general of Vasantdada Sugar Institute Shivaji Deshmukh, Dean, faculty of management, University of Pune Dr CM Chitale, Chairman of Cosmos Bank, Pune M L Abhyankar also spoke.